Warden Healer PUG Blues

One_ofMany

I'm having a difficult time in Random Dungeon PUGs getting people to understand my heals are AOE. Is there anything I can do to have more range?

NordSwordnBoard

Jorvuld's guidance increases duration, but not range.

alexj4596b14_ESO

One_ofMany wrote: »

I'm having a difficult time in Random Dungeon PUGs getting people to understand my heals are AOE. Is there anything I can do to have more range?

The only thing you can do is say "stay in the green/gold glowing rings. If you don't you die.

redspecter23

If your group can't stay in the heals, your group will die. They will still find a way to blame you, but not much you can do about that.

If the fight demands that the group spread out, use whatever tools you have to keep people healed the best you can. If you're talking about normal dungeons or easier vet dungeons and your group is still dying, that's not a healer problem at that point. That's a squishy dps problem.

UntilValhalla13

Run mutagen. It's super useful in chaotic situations.

profundidob16_ESO

One_ofMany wrote: »

I'm having a difficult time in Random Dungeon PUGs getting people to understand my heals are AOE. Is there anything I can do to have more range?

It's not them my friend, it's you. You have to learn how to heal (efficiently)

Start with learning the absolute basics properly: Use only 3 skills the whole dungeon until you start really understanding them and finally master them:


"Healing Ward" or ("Ward ally")
"Rapid Regeneration" (or "Mutagen")
"Healing springs"


Even with these classless most basic healing skills range is no problem at all. You can litteraly stand 25m away from everyone and still heal everyone perfectly.

Practise until you can keep everyone alive and topped off using only these 3 basic core healing skills...

When you master the basics, come back for more

FierceSam

Are you suggesting you don’t use a resto staff?

If so, that’s a brave choice. I think most people would expect a healer to be using a resto staff, so you would have both AoE and directable heals. After all the healing role is primarily to keep your team alive and buffed. If you aren’t doing that, you might need to adapt your build or playing style.

I like Profundidob’s idea, focus on a few key skills then maybe swop in a warden health skill for one of those three to accommodate your build.

As with many of these things clear communication with your group goes a long way.

p00tx

One thing to keep in mind:

I know that Wardens have a killer healing toolkit on their innate skill lines. I main a small army of Templars (love those things), and two of them are healers, which works well because Templars also have a pretty great innate healing skill line. Even with my innate abilities however, I use the Resto skill line to supplement some of the skills my innate abilities lack, such as a ranged HoT (Mutagen), or a ground based spammable heal (Healing Springs). I even use the Overflowing Altar and occasionally Bone Shield from the Undaunted skill line when needed.

A good healer knows how to make use of all of their available resources, rather than limiting themselves to their innate skills, thereby forcing their teammates to conform to their limited healing style rather than the reverse. While it IS the DD's job to know how to let themselves properly be healed, it is the healer's job to conform to the team in terms of gear used and skill load outs. It's what makes being a healer so dynamic and fun, and makes good healers such a hot commodity for raid groups.

I would suggest exploring all of the skill lines available to you, and experimenting with each one to find a rotation that addresses your needs. There are a lot of good skills out there! You'll get there.

weedgenius

Take the morph of the tree ult that the build guide does not recommend. It helps because teammates continue to heal after leaving the forest.

profundidob16_ESO

I cannot state this enough but since the restoration staff skill tree was designed to be the most bread and butter of healing, no healer should gimp himself by running without it and using only class specific healing skills.

If you allow yourself to get into the habit of not using the essentials you are effectively gimping yourslf and making it impossible to later on beat the hardest level of content (hardmode, compensating for low dps or bad tanks, etc...)

healing springs is the essential, class specific is the flavor to add to it. I can easily heal through a vet dlc with only 2 skills: "ward ally" and "healing springs". I can however not do the same by only using class specific. Not on my templar and not on my warden. It just burns through your magicka in seconds

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO

. I know that Wardens have a killer healing toolkit on their innate skill lines.

Could not disagree more. I made a list going through the wardens healing tree a while ago, it still applys, as all the skills are basically the same, from a tank/healers prospective. Seen here-

lets go over the healing line with an eye for tank or healer use.


Fungal Growth and morphs are too expensive and heal too little to use on a tank, even on my healer i only use this skill for the 10% minor buffs, once every 20 seconds.

Budding Seeds is bad on a tank because it takes 2 casts to use and it only lasts for 6 seconds, this is also why i don't use that skill on my warden healer. maybe if Budding Seeds lasted for 12 seconds, with the option to get the burst any time in that 12 seconds, otherwise it is useless on a healer too, takes too much to keep up. this skill is basically the healing ritual (the clap heal from temps line) that you can place the ground, and in my opinion it is just as bad. the only thing good about it is the synergy.

Leeching Vines is the only skill from this line that i use on my tank, to provide resources from the passive and puts minor lifesteal on the boss most of the time, might actually try using blood altar here, because blood altar also provides a synergy for the group and puts minor lifesteal on everything in 28 meter range. for 33 or 47 seconds. that is a huge amount of time.

Lotus Flower and morphs are crap heals too, once a second IF you are light weaving, which on a tank or heal you can't really do, no guarantee that the tank will get the heal, the only reason i run this on my stamden is because i am too cheap to use good pots for major savagery. inner light is 100% better if you are using this skill for the major prophecy, ie Lotus Blossom, because it gives you 7% max mag, like 3 -4k my healer and 2% regen for having it on my bar. passively. much better then having to reapply the buff every 20 seconds.

Nature's Grasp and morphs are useless for a healer because you have to aim them and they only heal one or 2 targets, one of those being you , lol, 100% useless on a tank.

Secluded Grove and morphs are a noob trap, you really ought never to need that much healing from a ulti, you need to be using warhorn.


in conclusion, maybe one skill from this line is useful to me as a tank, the rest fall short. even on my full time healer, i only use one of them and that is not even for the heal itself, it is for the buff it provides my team. i have healed and tanked all the four man dungoens in the game on my warden as a tank and healer and beat them as a dps on my bow/bow stamden, you are greatly exaggerating the usefulness of the skill in this line.

Long story short, I basically run one skill from this skill line, for the minor buffs, my front bar on my warden looks like this-

Inner light, ward Ally, netch, healing springs, combat prayer, ulti northern storm.

. Templars also have a pretty great innate healing skill like

Templars healing skill line is only marginally better.

Rushed ceremony is considered the bread and butter heal of temps, though if you need to use this more then once or twice a dungeon, your team is bad or you are a bad healer. The morph Breath of life has been nerfed over and over. The secondary heal now is like 3k on my temp. Hardly worth anything and I actually swapped morphs to honor the dead, it gives a 15% reduction in cost, immediately and then 45% more of the cost if you wait, if you hit someone under 75%, which is the only time you ought to use this skill. On my temp this is like 500 magic back on use and 1500 over the next 6 seconds. Much more useful to me then a small secondary heal. I pretty much only use this skill on the tank. If I have to spam it, the run is probably doomed anyways.


Healing ritual is has a base cost is 7.3 magic, almost double any other single healing skill in the game. Heals in a 10 meter range but boy, you can heal the crap out of everyone in that range. The skill is as strong as breath but can hit 6 people, if stacked properly. The morphs are kinda worthless, one gives a small burst heal, half the main heal, but it can hit anyone in a 28 meter range, the other gives everyone you hit with it minor expedition, 10% movement speed. Never really used this heal. Honor the dead is cheaper and you never really need to burst heal a group if you know how to play.

Restoring aura and the morph radiant aura are skills that are simply out classed by eledrain. Eledrain is free and lasts 30% longer, yes restoring aura is AOE but minor magic steal does not stack and with eledrain you get major breach. Repentance on the other hand, is not really a healers skill.

Cleansing ritual is probably my favorite healing skill in this tree, huge aoe heal over time. This gives you minor mending while you stand in it, 8% more healing for all your skills. The biggest problem is that it ticks every 2 seconds, so a 12 second skill is 7 ticks of healing. Other AOE heals in the game tick every second. This matter more when SPC was the only way to get major courage but it is still something to be aware of. The morphs pretty much make you choose between a longer heal, 12 to 24 seconds, so 13 ticks of heals or doing damage over time as well. I never like the damage morph, the ticks at the same speed of healing, so you only get 7 ticks of damage. Hardly worth it. Mobs are also snared in your aoe.


Rune focus is the Templars major resistance buff skill. Recently changed to stick to you, in trading a shorter duration. It is much better the way it is now. The morphs are choosing between more magic regen or Stam regen, 480 to be exact. I only use this skill in trials, as channeled focus, as then is when you have less time to do resto heavys, which you ought to be doing as much as you can, since major mending.


Rite of passage falls prey to the same thing secluded Grove does, you just do not need that much healing, if you know what you are doing. You ought to be using warhorn.


At the end of the day, only 2 skills from this line are on my bar most of the time, honor the dead and extended ritual. The former is hardly used and the later is mainly for the minor mending buff. You ought to have combat prayer on your bar and healing springs/mutegen. These skills are basically all the heals you need.

FrancisCrawford

The class skills I love most on a templar healer include:

• Channeled Focus -- great sustain. Nice to add add tankiness.
• Blazing Spear/Luminous Shards -- one of my essential roles as a healer is to throw Orbs or Shards. I can do that for "free" as part of a great damage skill (Blazing Spear morph), or do it even better than via Orbs, still for "free", as part of a decent damage skill (Shards).

Runners-up are:

• Purifying Light -- great damage skill in boss fights in good groups, with a nice heal for free.
• Honor the Dead -- I love it in hybrid damage/healing/solo/duo/whatever builds. I like it as a safety net in true group healing situations, but sometimes rely just on Ward Ally instead.
• Reflective Light -- good damage skill, plus free Major Prophecy for me, plus a bit of ultimate for me, plus free Minor Sorcery for my group (unless I provided it already with Purifying Light anyway).

Wardens also have a bunch of good skills, but they're less versatile, so it's tougher to fit as good a group of skills together onto your skill bars. Besides, it's tempting to provide Cloak for everybody, and that just adds to the crunch. And I agree that it's hair-raising to heal just with Warden class skills rather than also using a resto staff. Indeed, I don't regard that as running a true healer; it's more of a solo/duo/3-DD-no-healer kind of situation.

As for resto skills:

• Ward Ally is now a key skill for me. I no longer bother slotting a personal shield.
• Mutagen is cost-effective and gives a bit of an emergency safety net. It (or the other morph) are also invaluable for proccing a couple of common healer sets, namely Spell Power Cure, Earthgore and Troll King. I wear the first two of those, so for me Mutagen is essential.
• Healing Springs is a nice-to-have, pretty good when the group takes a lot of damage. But it no longer gets onto my bar for 4-person group healing.
• Combat Prayer is great if the group's DPS warrants it.

p00tx

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO wrote: »

. I know that Wardens have a killer healing toolkit on their innate skill lines.

Could not disagree more. I made a list going through the wardens healing tree a while ago, it still applys, as all the skills are basically the same, from a tank/healers prospective. Seen here-

lets go over the healing line with an eye for tank or healer use.


Fungal Growth and morphs are too expensive and heal too little to use on a tank, even on my healer i only use this skill for the 10% minor buffs, once every 20 seconds.

Budding Seeds is bad on a tank because it takes 2 casts to use and it only lasts for 6 seconds, this is also why i don't use that skill on my warden healer. maybe if Budding Seeds lasted for 12 seconds, with the option to get the burst any time in that 12 seconds, otherwise it is useless on a healer too, takes too much to keep up. this skill is basically the healing ritual (the clap heal from temps line) that you can place the ground, and in my opinion it is just as bad. the only thing good about it is the synergy.

Leeching Vines is the only skill from this line that i use on my tank, to provide resources from the passive and puts minor lifesteal on the boss most of the time, might actually try using blood altar here, because blood altar also provides a synergy for the group and puts minor lifesteal on everything in 28 meter range. for 33 or 47 seconds. that is a huge amount of time.

Lotus Flower and morphs are crap heals too, once a second IF you are light weaving, which on a tank or heal you can't really do, no guarantee that the tank will get the heal, the only reason i run this on my stamden is because i am too cheap to use good pots for major savagery. inner light is 100% better if you are using this skill for the major prophecy, ie Lotus Blossom, because it gives you 7% max mag, like 3 -4k my healer and 2% regen for having it on my bar. passively. much better then having to reapply the buff every 20 seconds.

Nature's Grasp and morphs are useless for a healer because you have to aim them and they only heal one or 2 targets, one of those being you , lol, 100% useless on a tank.

Secluded Grove and morphs are a noob trap, you really ought never to need that much healing from a ulti, you need to be using warhorn.


in conclusion, maybe one skill from this line is useful to me as a tank, the rest fall short. even on my full time healer, i only use one of them and that is not even for the heal itself, it is for the buff it provides my team. i have healed and tanked all the four man dungoens in the game on my warden as a tank and healer and beat them as a dps on my bow/bow stamden, you are greatly exaggerating the usefulness of the skill in this line.

Long story short, I basically run one skill from this skill line, for the minor buffs, my front bar on my warden looks like this-

Inner light, ward Ally, netch, healing springs, combat prayer, ulti northern storm.

. Templars also have a pretty great innate healing skill like

Templars healing skill line is only marginally better.

Rushed ceremony is considered the bread and butter heal of temps, though if you need to use this more then once or twice a dungeon, your team is bad or you are a bad healer. The morph Breath of life has been nerfed over and over. The secondary heal now is like 3k on my temp. Hardly worth anything and I actually swapped morphs to honor the dead, it gives a 15% reduction in cost, immediately and then 45% more of the cost if you wait, if you hit someone under 75%, which is the only time you ought to use this skill. On my temp this is like 500 magic back on use and 1500 over the next 6 seconds. Much more useful to me then a small secondary heal. I pretty much only use this skill on the tank. If I have to spam it, the run is probably doomed anyways.


Healing ritual is has a base cost is 7.3 magic, almost double any other single healing skill in the game. Heals in a 10 meter range but boy, you can heal the crap out of everyone in that range. The skill is as strong as breath but can hit 6 people, if stacked properly. The morphs are kinda worthless, one gives a small burst heal, half the main heal, but it can hit anyone in a 28 meter range, the other gives everyone you hit with it minor expedition, 10% movement speed. Never really used this heal. Honor the dead is cheaper and you never really need to burst heal a group if you know how to play.

Restoring aura and the morph radiant aura are skills that are simply out classed by eledrain. Eledrain is free and lasts 30% longer, yes restoring aura is AOE but minor magic steal does not stack and with eledrain you get major breach. Repentance on the other hand, is not really a healers skill.

Cleansing ritual is probably my favorite healing skill in this tree, huge aoe heal over time. This gives you minor mending while you stand in it, 8% more healing for all your skills. The biggest problem is that it ticks every 2 seconds, so a 12 second skill is 7 ticks of healing. Other AOE heals in the game tick every second. This matter more when SPC was the only way to get major courage but it is still something to be aware of. The morphs pretty much make you choose between a longer heal, 12 to 24 seconds, so 13 ticks of heals or doing damage over time as well. I never like the damage morph, the ticks at the same speed of healing, so you only get 7 ticks of damage. Hardly worth it. Mobs are also snared in your aoe.


Rune focus is the Templars major resistance buff skill. Recently changed to stick to you, in trading a shorter duration. It is much better the way it is now. The morphs are choosing between more magic regen or Stam regen, 480 to be exact. I only use this skill in trials, as channeled focus, as then is when you have less time to do resto heavys, which you ought to be doing as much as you can, since major mending.


Rite of passage falls prey to the same thing secluded Grove does, you just do not need that much healing, if you know what you are doing. You ought to be using warhorn.


At the end of the day, only 2 skills from this line are on my bar most of the time, honor the dead and extended ritual. The former is hardly used and the later is mainly for the minor mending buff. You ought to have combat prayer on your bar and healing springs/mutegen. These skills are basically all the heals you need.

Since you are an experienced healer, then you already know that there is far more to being a healer than just refilling someone's health pool. Templars and Wardens both have really great passives and secondary buffs that help make your team more effective. While you're right, in that I don't fill my bar with Templar abilities, I do use some of them pretty regularly. I keep up Power of the Light, to give the minor breach and fracture for my team. It also procs the Illuminate passive, which provides your team with Minor Sorcery, and it increases your ulti regen, which means more Warhorns. I keep up shards because it helps with the dps and gives me a way to help with Tanks resources that can be aimed specifically at them, and not get sucked up by the DDs (orbs). I use channeled focus for my own resource regen, plus my own survivabiity, so I can focus more on my team than myself. I swap between Efficient Purge and Ritual for the cleanse, depending on content. Ritual gives Alkosh tanks an extra synergy, plus it provides a little snare for the NPCs, which can sometimes (not always) be helpful. Nova and its morphs are used pretty regularly in end game for the mitigation properties, plus it's a super powerful AoE, and it provides yet another synergy for an Alkosh tank (and if the tank is doing the newer Harmony trait build, this is HUGE). That is 5/12 potential slots in your loadout from your innate skill line, which is not bad at all.

I don't know enough about Wardens off-hand to point out all of their specifics, but I do know they have a lot of great passives and secondary effects in their skills. If you are limiting yourself that much, you are missing out on a lot of good stuff that could push your team ahead of the curve.

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO

@p00tx well, yeah, healing more then "refilling someone's health pool" the person i was replying too was talking about the 2 classes healing skill lines. not rest of their tool kit.

p00tx

It was me you were replying to

kringled_1

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO wrote: »

. I know that Wardens have a killer healing toolkit on their innate skill lines.

Could not disagree more. I made a list going through the wardens healing tree a while ago, it still applys, as all the skills are basically the same, from a tank/healers prospective. Seen here-

lets go over the healing line with an eye for tank or healer use.


Fungal Growth and morphs are too expensive and heal too little to use on a tank, even on my healer i only use this skill for the 10% minor buffs, once every 20 seconds.

Budding Seeds is bad on a tank because it takes 2 casts to use and it only lasts for 6 seconds, this is also why i don't use that skill on my warden healer. maybe if Budding Seeds lasted for 12 seconds, with the option to get the burst any time in that 12 seconds, otherwise it is useless on a healer too, takes too much to keep up. this skill is basically the healing ritual (the clap heal from temps line) that you can place the ground, and in my opinion it is just as bad. the only thing good about it is the synergy.

Leeching Vines is the only skill from this line that i use on my tank, to provide resources from the passive and puts minor lifesteal on the boss most of the time, might actually try using blood altar here, because blood altar also provides a synergy for the group and puts minor lifesteal on everything in 28 meter range. for 33 or 47 seconds. that is a huge amount of time.

Lotus Flower and morphs are crap heals too, once a second IF you are light weaving, which on a tank or heal you can't really do, no guarantee that the tank will get the heal, the only reason i run this on my stamden is because i am too cheap to use good pots for major savagery. inner light is 100% better if you are using this skill for the major prophecy, ie Lotus Blossom, because it gives you 7% max mag, like 3 -4k my healer and 2% regen for having it on my bar. passively. much better then having to reapply the buff every 20 seconds.

Nature's Grasp and morphs are useless for a healer because you have to aim them and they only heal one or 2 targets, one of those being you , lol, 100% useless on a tank.

Secluded Grove and morphs are a noob trap, you really ought never to need that much healing from a ulti, you need to be using warhorn.


in conclusion, maybe one skill from this line is useful to me as a tank, the rest fall short. even on my full time healer, i only use one of them and that is not even for the heal itself, it is for the buff it provides my team. i have healed and tanked all the four man dungoens in the game on my warden as a tank and healer and beat them as a dps on my bow/bow stamden, you are greatly exaggerating the usefulness of the skill in this line.

Long story short, I basically run one skill from this skill line, for the minor buffs, my front bar on my warden looks like this-

Inner light, ward Ally, netch, healing springs, combat prayer, ulti northern storm.

I don't like arguing when I know that the other person probably has a much deeper list of difficult accomplishments in game but I'm going to do it anyways.
I'll differ from you on the Warden class heals:
Enchanted growth I agree is too expensive for what it does. I use it on my destro bar to keep regen buffs up and as an emergency if I'm on that bar at a bad moment.
Budding seed, however, I really like as an AOE heal. It's really cheap (2188 on my Altmer, presumably less on a Breton), and is a huge heal with a synergy, and I think efficiency wise it competes with Healing Springs in high damage phases, and can trigger major mending. Usually I place it, do something else for 6 sec, then replace it. I'll only double cast if I think a real burst is needed. Maybe it's a matter of being used to the timing and style of it?

Vines- agreed that Leeching vines is the way to go for a tank (and yes, I think altar is probably a good (better?) alternative there). Living Trellis is a pretty solid heal for keeping a single target up and going when on a healer.

Lotus flower: I do keep up lights and heavies on both healer and tank (tank to keep enchants procced and heavies for stamina, although not when I need to block for a more extended stretch). It feels like just free heals for maintaining the buff, although I see the point you're making about inner light.

Nature's Grasp: I don't have a PvE situation where this mobility is really useful.

Secluded Grove: although I've usually had this on one bar as a healer, I don't think I've ever used it on either of my magden healers. I have used it on a tank (of course warhorn as the main ult); in a pugged dungeon it has come in handy when the healer goes down; I placed it down to keep everyone up while we rezzed the healer.

For resto skills; I usually slot combat prayer, not so much springs, and I could run mutagen (sometimes) but usually will run energy orbs instead.
In the end, there is very little you can do as a healer if one of the dps insists on remaining 10m behind you and yet is still eating a lot of damage. I'd rather keep the tank and the other dps up in that case, and turn to the other one when it's safe to do so.

Lightspeedflashb14_ESO

. I don't like arguing when I know that the other person probably has a much deeper list of difficult accomplishments in game but I'm going to do it anyways.

Your trepanation is unnecessary, we are all here to trade ideas and argue, if we agreed on everything, what would be the fun of that?

. Enchanted growth I agree is too expensive for what it does. I use it on my destro bar to keep regen buffs up and as an emergency if I'm on that bar at a bad moment.

Literally the same here.

.Budding seed, however, I really like as an AOE heal. It's really cheap (2188 on my Altmer, presumably less on a Breton), and is a huge heal with a synergy, and I think efficiency wise it competes with Healing Springs in high damage phases, and can trigger major mending. Usually I place it, do something else for 6 sec, then replace it. I'll only double cast if I think a real burst is needed. Maybe it's a matter of being used to the timing and style of it?

Cost is really not a factor, and if you don't already have it down, it takes 2 casts before you get a heal. That is a huge deal. As I said, realy the only good thing is that synergy. Which scales off the stats of the person that uses it, so that number you see in the Tooltip is missleading. Though I have put it on my bar and used it, just for and extra synergy, the main heal is usually not needed, combat prayer and springs keep people up through almost everything.

. Vines- agreed that Leeching vines is the way to go for a tank (and yes, I think altar is probably a good (better?) alternative there). Living Trellis is a pretty solid heal for keeping a single target up and going when on a healer.

Living trellis just seems like such bad design. A burst heal after 10 seconds just does not make sense to me. In general, I dont like heals that only impact one person, even mutagen is iffy to me cause only 2. If they extended both heals to 20 seconds, including the minor life steal from leeching, the skill would be so much more reliable.

.Lotus flower: I do keep up lights and heavies on both healer and tank (tank to keep enchants procced and heavies for stamina, although not when I need to block for a more extended stretch). It feels like just free heals for maintaining the buff, although I see the point you're making about inner light.

There are just better skills a tank ought to have on there bars. The single target heal is just not worth a slot on a tank. I did try to run the skill on my healer but having to cast it every 20 seconds is a bit much for me, especially with inner lights stat boost taken into consideration.

For resto skills; I usually slot combat prayer, not so much springs, and I could run mutagen (sometimes) but usually will run energy orbs instead.

I have 2 master resto that I use on my healers. Springs is such a good skill, magic back for you, Stam for everyone in the AOE.

For what it is worth, I have changed my healers bar since I wrote that, here they are-

Templar in Bogdan/healing mage/master resto/back bar Olo

Resto

Inner light, hasty prayer, restoring arua, healing springs, combat prayer, ulti barrier

Lightning staff

Extended ritual, purifying ritual, channeled focus, shards/orbs, wall, ulti warhorn

Warden in Earthgore/SPC/ master resto, back bar jorvuns guidance.

Resto

Inner light, budding seeds, netch, springs, combat prayer, ulti northern storm

Lightning

Eledrain, enchanted growth, blood altar, orbs, wall, ulti warhorn